Two, four, six, eight, let the small schools field just eight

The Back Porch column

By Nerissa Young

Football Friday nights are not much fun at Hannan High School in Mason County. The team roster has a baker’s dozen names. As of this writing, the Wildcats are winless.

The state chapter of the National Football Foundation is asking the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission to consider letting small schools put on the pads with eight players instead of 11.

Hannan coach Dave Barr told the Charleston Daily Mail that he doesn’t have enough players on the field to line up against each other during practice. The school’s enrollment is fewer than 150 students for grades nine through 12.

The Daily Mail reports eight-player teams are more common west of the Mississippi in rural communities where local high schools don’t have enough students for 25 players on a team.

It’s worth a look. Young people need to learn how to lose, and organized sports can teach them that. Short of organized sports, life will teach them that. But young people should also enjoy fair play. Pitting schools against each other where one has double the enrollment of the other doesn’t seem quite fair.

West Virginia has 39 AAA high school football teams, 37 AA teams and 40 A teams, according to the WVSSAC Web site. That sounds like an equitable division. Well, those numbers make it seem so, but not every high school in West Virginia has a football team.

Here are the enrollment caps that determine classification. AAA schools have a minimum of 619 students. AA schools have between 340 and 618 students. A schools have zero to 337 students.

That means Hannan is playing schools twice its enrollment. At the AA level, the smaller schools are also playing schools nearly twice their enrollment. James Monroe High School in rural Monroe County competes against Herbert Hoover High in Charleston, Weir High in the Northern Panhandle and Bluefield. Of course, the Mavericks have been holding their own this season in AA play.

Former Marshall University head football coach Bob Pruett is active in the National Football Foundation and supports the eight-player proposal. “What we’re trying to do is offer an alternative to keep our traditions alive but not take away from traditions we already have,” he told the Daily Mail.

The Mountain State’s topography leaves a lot of isolated communities, despite the waves of consolidation that have crashed against small communities the past two decades. The WVSSAC hasn’t kept pace. It just keeps pigeon holing the new schools into the old framework.

Officials should consider the eight-player proposal, but they should also consider realigning the classification system altogether. It’s time to move to five or six classes. West Virginia’s population doesn’t justify the multilayered approach in Virginia with 12 regions and six divisions within its three classifications, according to the Virginia High School League Web site, but a three-way split is too narrow.

Yes, it would cost more money to administer from the state level, but it would encourage more participation in smaller communities and allow some high schools to put a team on the field. Count the revenue of more teams playing and the potential economic windfall for smaller communities that get to host playoff and championship games.

The state’s population is stagnant except for the Eastern Panhandle. It’s time for the WVSSAC to acknowledge that and provide more opportunities for the young people who are living here.

In small towns, it’s not just football. It’s not just a game. It’s community spirit and pride. It’s a force that binds together all socioeconomic classes. It’s one thing that can bring hope to the hopeless.

— Young is a Register-Herald columnist. E-mail: ynerissa@verizon.net

© 2009 by Nerissa Young